How Margaret Mahy creates a sense of ritual in Chapter 9 of "The Changeover". |
By: Roger Hansford |
'Janua Caeli' said the gates of the old Carlisle home in a single iron voice. . . . Laura . . . spoke the name of the house like a magic spell . . .
As Laura enters the home of the Carlisle witches in Chapter 9, readers are already familiar with the setting, as shown by this quotation from Chapter 5. We are aware that the house and garden overlook and also, at one time, were tied with the land over which the personified city ‘crept out and out, an industrious amoeba, extending itself, engulfing all it encountered’. The sense of magic realism within the description implies an unseen power at work and suggests that Miryam, Winter, and Sorry have control over the unfolding events. As the ritual scene begins we are aware of a sexual tension between Sorry and Laura which is integral to the Changeover, and does not come to fruition until after it has been worked.
Mahy begins the Changeover with a candlelit bath accompanied by dream-inducing smoke from a cat-shaped brazier. Just as the city had appeared earlier to have its own life, Laura sees everything come and go, as her visions merge in and out with the described reality. Miryam mentions the full moon and then assigns titles to each ritual participant, deepening the sense of mystery as the Preparer, the Gatekeeper, and the Concluder are introduced. A similar effect occurs as Laura puts on the necklace and shift given her by Miryam and reads the words ‘BATH MAT’ as ‘TAM HTAB’. Laura drinks from the cup of mulled wine, coloured ‘kingfisher-blue’ to link with an earlier act of white witchcraft by Sorry Carlisle, and must prick her finger as she is invited to become ‘a woman of the moon’.
The sensory nature of this scene is compounded by the collocation of ritualistic tropes, many of which have Christian origins. As if undergoing baptism, Laura must bathe in order to bring about renewal and change within herself. There is also a strong reminiscence of a Eucharist service as Laura puts on a ritual dress, drinks from a blood-filled cup within a candlelit atmosphere, and reads ritualistic text whilst breathing incense. Although not faithful to a Christian wedding, the ritual may echo the Jewish Shabbat celebrations with their focus on the bride.
With the mention of the moon, and later lightning, Mahy invokes images of nature to catalyse the witchcraft ceremony. However, her exploration of human nature is predominant within the scene. Laura says at the beginning of the chapter that ‘everything is changing’, and is made aware of her puberty when held in front of a mirror and told it is ‘a wonderful, mysterious thing to be a girl’. With this pause in the ritualistic action, it is almost as if Laura is being prepared for marriage: given away (in a nod to feminism) by her surrogate mother and soon-to-be fellow priestess, she undergoes changeover to womanhood as she becomes Sorry’s bride.
‘“The Sleeping Beauty always loves the Prince who wakes her”’, says Sorry as Laura emerges from ‘the forest of all forests, the forest at the heart of fairy tales, the looking glass forest’. With the pricked finger, the hacking through forest, and Laura’s waking kiss, Mahy does not disguise her references to fairy tales and to other mythology in the second part of the chapter. As Laura mentally travels the time and space of her life and locality, quite ordinary descriptions intersperse with the imagery of legend to once again confuse the boundaries of reality. In the woods, Laura passes a unicorn and Little Red Riding Hood, and she actually links the importance of mirrors in the scene to Alice in Wonderland. We can think of King Arthur’s Excalibur as she wrestles her way to the quarry pool; like Orpheus in Orpheus and Euridice she must ‘never look back’: again Mahy reverses the traditional gender roles.
With Laura’s final look in the mirror she sees all possibilities, realises that the forest comprises the many aspects of her mind which she must control in order to grow, and to defeat Carmody Braque. Once the Changeover, central in the plot, has been worked, Laura can defeat the life-draining force of Braque, bring back her brother Jacko from his coma, and unite with Kate and Chris, and with her lover Sorry. The rich sensuality of the Changeover in Chapter 9 of this novel gives it prime importance to the reader; by the end we know it was essential not just to the witch but also to the woman Laura would become.
SOURCE:
Mahy, M. (1984) The Changeover. London: The Penguin Group.